One veteran teacher’s LENA Grow journey: “It kind of goes back to my childhood. I struggled with learning. I never really had anyone who taught me that as long as I kept trying, I could.”
LENA (Language ENvironment Analysis) is a national nonprofit on a mission to transform early childhood education.
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LENA Grow
offers evidence-based professional development for early childhood educators.
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LENA Start
builds school readiness and strengthens families with parent-group classes.
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LENA SP
offers reliable, detailed language environment data in research and clinical applications.
In Ohio, LENA has reached 9.5k children and 2.2k early childhood educators since 2017, and LENA technology has recorded more than 8.1 million conversational turns.
With these CLSD funds, Ohio aims to "strengthen the way teachers and administrators are implementing the state’s science of reading initiative." Competitive subgrants will be awarded to birth to five organizations, in addition to K-12 initiatives. Early learning and early literacy skills go hand in hand, and this is a fantastic opportunity to bring LENA Grow to your community.
Preschool Promise, located in Dayton, was awarded funds to bring LENA Grow to its programs in 2019.
"As part of our CLSD application, we focused on the foundational elements of emergent language and literacy for infants and toddlers," said Amy Kronberg, Senior Manager of Early Learning Initiatives at Preschool Promise. "LENA was the most important tool we identified to support the quantity of interactions and help embed coaching into existing teaching practices."
A request for applications is expected to be released in early 2025.
The LENA team is here to support your application.
The Ohio Child Care Resource & Referral Association (OCCRRA) has adopted LENA Grow as a professional development and technical assistance program available in all 12 service delivery areas across the state.
Read more in a case study about OCCRRA's statewide implementation of LENA Grow.
LENA Grow teachers earn professional development hours that are required by child care licensing and through Step Up to Quality, as detailed in the Ohio Professional Registry.
July 13, 2024 | LCCAA Head Start teachers intentionally interact with every one of their students and they have the data to prove it. Read more ...
“OCCRRA chose LENA because of its intriguing established practice-based approach tracking conversational turns for each child. Ohio recognizes the critical need for early talk, for each child, which is supported throughout Ohio’s Early Learning and Development Standards, and targeted in the Language and Literacy Domain. LENA also aligns with Ohio’s Early Childhood Core Knowledge & Competencies and is a critical component in the Learning Environments & Experiences and Child Growth & Development Areas. ... LENA actively supports OCCRRA’s priority of educating early care and education professionals so young children reach their fullest abilities and are prepared to enter Kindergarten.”
"One of our teachers actually said, ‘You know, I love this tool because it reminds me that I’m having meaningful interactions with these children and that it’s helping them to grow,’ which I just think is such a beautiful light bulb moment to see."
Whether you're with a school district, CCR&R, state agency, library, university-community partnership, public health initiative, or any other organization dedicated to improving early childhood outcomes, we want to help you put your organization on the LENA map.
Partner success stories and research findings in Ohio and beyond.
One veteran teacher’s LENA Grow journey: “It kind of goes back to my childhood. I struggled with learning. I never really had anyone who taught me that as long as I kept trying, I could.”
Dr. Lucy Hart Paulson, co-author of LETRS for Early Childhood Educators, on how learning to talk and learning to read and write happen in parallel. Learning to read starts earlier than you think, and conversational turns are an important piece of the puzzle!
Lesson #1: States can fund quality initiatives without sacrificing their commitment to access. … What else did we learn from state leaders in Ohio and Tennessee about scalable early childhood initiatives?
It’s more important than ever to equip early childhood educators to address children’s unique needs and help get their language and social-emotional development on track. There’s strong new evidence to suggest that LENA Grow, a language-focused professional development program for early educators, is effective at doing just that.
What role may a child’s earliest interactions play in laying the foundation for learning to read? In this webinar, we take an expert deep dive into how conversational turns from ages birth to five fit into the ongoing discussions around the “science of reading.”
It’s no easy task for early childhood leaders to strategically disburse funds from PDG B-5, CCDBG, CLSD, and ARPA grants into the hands of LEAs and CCR&Rs. In fact, the alphabet soup of early childhood education funding streams can be a bit hard to digest, so to speak. In this webinar, state leaders will tell the stories of how and why they invested in initiatives for statewide implementation, as well as their visions for further expansion and impact.